The work was brought onto the series wrapped in a sleeping bag by retired accountant Mary-Louise Wedderburn, who revealed she thought it was a work of Scottish artist Katherine Read.<\/p>\n
Wedderburn said she had inherited the painting from her uncle, who died 20 years ago, and believed that acclaimed portraitist Read might have been a distant relative.<\/p>\n
Art historian Charles Greig described the portrait<\/a> on Thursday\u2019s episode (23 July) as \u201cone of the trickiest paintings I\u2019ve ever had to consider\u201d.<\/p>\n However, he concluded that, \u201con the basis of all the evidence put together\u201d, he was \u201centirely certain\u201d it was a Read painting. Wedderburn was overwhelmed to have the portrait\u2019s authenticity confirmed, stating: “It’s wonderful, it’s unbelievable. Thank you so much.<\/p>\n “It’s just so important to me that it’s by Katherine Read, because of the family connection, but also because of who she was.”<\/p>\n She added: \u201cThe more that we find out about Katherine Read, the more I think she was just a wonderful woman, she was just super.\u201d<\/p>\n The painting depicted an Indian woman wearing a nose ring, a pearl necklace, and an emerald pendant. Of the discovery, art dealer and presenter Philip Mould said they had \u201cjust witnessed a significant baptism in art historical terms\u201d, adding: \u201cNow that we have a very significant artist \u2013 and we also have a highly likely subject \u2013 this is a hugely hot area in the art market. We\u2019re looking at \u00a3100,000 upwards. What a wonderful result.\u201d<\/p>\n He predicted that \u201cmore works by this pioneering woman artist in India\u201d will be \u201ccoming out of the woodwork\u201d as a result.<\/p>\n Read, a well-known portraitist at the time, studied in Europe, moved professionally in elite circles and was so successful that she was paid more handsomely than her better-known contemporaries, including Thomas Gainsborough.<\/p>\n The acclaimed artist worked in oils, crayons and miniature and centred on depictions of ladies and children of the aristocracy. <\/p>\n She exhibited her works with the Incorporated Society of Artists<\/a>, but was expelled after joining the Royal Academy. When new pastel artists rose to prominence, Read moved to India<\/a>, where she painted portraits of young English officers living there. <\/p>\n The painting that appeared on Fake or Fortune? is believed to be the earliest recorded portrait of an Indian sitter by a female artist from Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the most interesting things about this painting is that I’m pretty certain that [the sitter] is a member of the Nawab’s family in Madras,\u201d Greig explained.<\/p>\n “That is extremely unusual because most of the other portraits of Indian ladies are a companion, or sometimes a wife, of a European.<\/p>\n “But I can’t think of another portrait of an Indian lady of this period that is actually part of a royal court rather than a European’s household. That makes it enormously important.”<\/p>\n With the help of experts Professor Catriona Seth, Ashvin Rajagopalan and artist Lachlan Goudie, the art detectives discovered more about Read\u2019s \u201cintrepid, bold and eccentric character\u201d and how she travelled across Europe to Chennai<\/a> in India, then known as Madras.<\/p>\n Read died at sea near Madras in December 1778, aged 55.<\/p>\n Additional reporting by Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-783288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Katherine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-24-at-10-34-25.png\")
Katherine Read painting valued at \u00a3100,000 on ‘Fake or Fortune?’ (BBC)<\/p>\n![\"Mary-Louise](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-24-at-10-36-12.png\")
Mary-Louise Weddernburn was overwhelmed after learning painting was a work by Katherine Read (BBC)<\/p>\n